


She Knows Enough

by sketchy_and_unreliable



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, The three years before s03e09, hinted Hannibal/Will but not strictly stated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 18:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchy_and_unreliable/pseuds/sketchy_and_unreliable
Summary: Does your wife know how intimate your relationship with him was?She knows enough.Molly's understanding, from beginning to end.





	She Knows Enough

_ Does she know how intimate your relationship with Hannibal was? _

_ She knows enough. _

 

Molly Foster was a patient person.  As a single mother and dog owner, she had to be.  Waiting, and understanding, and supporting was a specialty of hers, and she made no exception for Will Graham.

There was little she knew about his history when they had first started dating.  She had never paid much attention to the news, which Will seemed to like about her.  She knew that he used to work for the FBI, catching crazy, violent people, and it became too much.  Upon Wally's request, he used to tell stories from some of his cases, but seemed to have a poor idea of what was and wasn't okay to tell a ten year old, and after she scolded him a few times, he stopped altogether.

She also knew he had had someone in his life, and suspected that  _ that  _ had been what was actually too much.  But those things didn't matter, and she fell in love with him anyway.

It was in bed, when they were both half-asleep, that she absentmindedly traced her finger along the scar on his forehead, feeling the raised skin there in the dim light.  He didn't say a word, but she could feel the shutters coming down behind his eyes, and the way he stiffened. She quietly chided herself. She knew he didn't like to talk about his scars, and she was fairly sure he pretended they didn't exist, and that he didn't look at them.

It was months later that she had learned about Him.  It had been at work, actually, and a coworker had casually mentioned the string of disappearances in the area and how that kind of thing gave her the heebie-jeebies after the story she had read.  Molly had asked, and she pulled something up on her phone.

The first thing she saw was the pictures, and she almost forgot to read the headline.

She ended up taking to the Internet herself once she got home.  It made her feel dirty, but she just wanted to know more. She quickly realized that most of it was conjecture and exaggeration for the sake of drama.  She read the words "Murder Husbands," and they made her feel sick to her stomach. It was a ridiculous and reductive moniker, but she couldn't help but draw the comparison.  She knew marriages like that. She wasn't upset that he hadn't told her, but she couldn't go on pretending not to know.

She invited him over for dinner, and waited for Wally to go to bed.  She had a nervous pit in her stomach, but swallowed it down.

"I...learned something new today."

Will looked up, and she was sure he knew what she was talking about.  He seemed...defeated.

"I'm sorry for not telling you.  I was going to eventually." He spoke low, avoiding her eyes like he often did, but ducking his head in the process.  Her heart hurt to see it.

"It's alright.  I don't know very much, though, and I wanted to hear it from you." She tried to put as much love as possible in her voice, despite knowing he could feel it from her no matter what.

Will didn't say anything for several long moments.  Finally he said, with a humorless laugh, "Could I have a drink?"

He hadn't touched alcohol, in the time they were dating.  She had gleaned it had been a coping mechanism in the past, and one he didn't like to rely on anymore.  She wouldn't begrudge it of him now, however.

They sat down in the living room, sharing a bottle of wine between them, and he told her.  Most of it, she sort of knew; He had been his therapist when he was a profiler, He had framed him for murder and put him in prison, Will had gotten out and tried to catch Him.  She saw him absentmindedly touch his stomach as he went on.

"Why did you go after him?" she asked, after he described that night.  What she wanted to ask was,  _ why did you call him,  _ but she found herself unable to voice it. 

His voice was a little choked, and he swallowed some wine before answering.  "I don't know. I think I wanted answers, or maybe I just wanted to kill him for what he did.  He said he had made a place for us− and I ruined it. I killed Abigail, I sent him on a rampage, and− I broke his heart.  I know it sounds insane, but...in another world...I would have liked to have seen that place." He laughed, darkly. "He really got in my head, didn't he?"

She waited, knowing he would go on if she didn't push.

"Anyway, I tried to stab him, we got caught by corrupt  _ polizia  _ hired by an unhinged titan of industry, we escaped, and then he turned himself in."  He shrugged and took another drink as if it was just that simple.

"He turned himself in?  Why?"

Will stared into his glass, and she could see something dark and bitter in his eyes.  "He's a psychopath with a God complex. He slithered his way out of a lethal injection despite killing− we don't even know how many people, but it's at least in the dozens− and now he's going to rot in a sterile box until he dies."

She knew he thought that was the end of it, and that he was happy that way.  But it wasn't, and he wasn't. Nobody spoke the way he did about Him if it was truly behind them.  But what could she say? Instead, she took his empty glass, kissed him, and headed for the kitchen to do the dishes.  Eventually, he came to help dry.

She mused on it for some time afterward.  If He had simply hurt him, she was sure it would have been much easier. If all He had done was lie, and attack him, and run off the way the story said, Will would have been okay.  But she knew, that with whatever definition could apply to someone like that, He loved him. And what was so painful was that he loved Him too.

Affectionately, she had once cradled her hand against the side of face, angling for a kiss.  The flinch was sudden and violent, and he turned away with some embarrassment, muttering "Sorry, he just...used to do that…" and even though she hadn't known, she felt guilty.  She made a mental note not to do it again.

Molly still knew that he loved them− she had no worries about that.  She could see it when he was out with Wally, playing with the dogs; she could see it when she woke up to find him gazing at her from the other side of the bed with a sleepy smile on his face.

He was a good lover, a generous one, likely as a result of his empathy; he was actually the best she'd ever had, but she knew saying that would embarrass him.  But there was a night, when he was above her, and his eyes had gone glassy, and she heard it so quietly: "Ha...Han−oh, my God..." and she knew. When they were lying side by side, exhausted, she saw the latent horror and guilt on his face, and she wanted to tell him that it was okay− but she knew that he wanted so badly for her to not have noticed, and so she said nothing.

And that's how they stayed, for years.  He moved in with them, they got more dogs, Wally started calling him "Dad".  And she watched him start to relax, and she noticed how he almost never woke shaking in a cold sweat, and that he didn't flinch away from her anymore.  They were, without a single doubt, happy. 

And when Jack Crawford came calling, she was certain that everything would be okay.


End file.
